Two Killed in Gas Well Explosion Near Pittsburgh

AP (INDIANOLA, PA) – A natural gas well where welders were believed to be working exploded Friday, killing two people and sparking a fire that spewed black smoke for hours.

警方说,爆炸发生在上午9:50左右,在匹兹堡东北部的印第安纳镇一个偏远的林区。消防员用泡沫扑灭了最终的大火,爆炸后约三个小时,火灾的一部分仍在燃烧。

原因尚不为人所知,但州官员认为“人们在现场焊接,爆炸了,被炸死了。”

“Why they were welding or what caused the explosion, I don’t know yet,” she said. A truck near the well had its paint scorched off and at least one of its tire had melted.

The well, dubbed Murray Heirs No. 6, is a shallow well, about 3,500 feet deep, and was drilled in May 2008, Humphries said. It was considered to be a producing well, she said.

The department won’t be able to determine the environmental impact until after the fire is extinguished, Humphries said.

Travis Novak, a 16-year-old who lives about a half-mile away, said he was sleeping when he was woken up by the explosion. “Then I got up and looked and heard another wild explosion,” he said.

The teenager and his friend Cory Drischler, 14, walked toward the site and saw “smoke just pouring out of the woods and then a loud bang. You could hear this loud noise like the gas was rushing down the hill.”

The well is owned by Huntley & Huntley Inc., which operates 389 gas wells in the state, according to DEP figures, and is also active in Oklahoma. The Monroeville-based company confirmed its workers had arrived at the well, but a spokeswoman said she had no further information.

汉弗莱斯说,这家私人公司没有违法记录。

The accident is the latest misfortune to strike the region’s burgeoning natural gas industry.

上个月,a well in north-central Pennsylvania without proper pressure-control systems exploded as a crew was preparing to hook it up to a pipeline. No one was injured.

A few days later, seven people were injured in a rig explosion in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle when the drilling crew struck a pocket of methane gas while sinking a natural gas well through an abandoned coal mine.

In May, a worker at a Susquehanna County drilling site was killed when he was hit on the head by a pipe, a death that the coroner ruled an accident.

In northeastern Pennsylvania, state environmental officials have said construction flaws in gas wells were responsible for allowing gas to seep into the area’s groundwater.

DEP Secretary John Hanger said in an e-mail message that the well where the accident occurred Friday is not part of the lucrative Marcellus Shale, a rock formation that drillers began tapping about two years ago.

截至2007年,宾夕法尼亚州拥有超过65,000个石油和天然气井,其中绝大多数钻入宾夕法尼亚州西部浅层的浅沙不超过3,000英尺。DEP估计,该州已经钻了多达350,000口井,可以追溯到1859年。

Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

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